Featured Events

Drop by the Library during our open hours to peruse the thousands of used books for sale. Don't miss this chance to pick up wonderful children's books, useful cookbooks, engaging paperbacks, and more books books books!

After the Saco Museum's successful 2013 sampler exhibit, "I My Needle Ply with Skill," and the book by the same title, the museum has been recognized as an important repository for and center of scholarship on northern New England samplers and silk embroideries. This summer, the museum offers a second exhibition on schoolgirl embroidery.

More than 130 important northern New England samplers are on exhibit including forty-one samplers from Maine and ninety-five from New Hampshire. Notable Maine needlework in the exhibition includes two almost identical samplers completed by twins Flavilla and Mary Jane Barker in Portland in 1818, reunited for the first time in nearly 190 years, as well as works from the schools of the Misses Martin and Rachel Hall Neal. "Industry and Virtue Joined" also features what is most likely the largest group of New Hampshire samplers ever gathered together in a single room. The exhibition includes twenty-one samplers from Portsmouth, significant examples of schoolgirl needlework from the Canterbury area and Pinkerton Academy in Londonderry, as well as many beautiful works from small towns across both states.

A full-color catalogue of the exhibition will be published mid to late summer 2015.

History Afoot: Walking Tour of Saco's Main Street10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Saturday, August 1Meet in front of the Saco Museum

Join us for a walking tour down Saco's Main St and back up Middle St to understand a bit of the social history of Downtown Saco. Families, children and adults alike will be fascinated with the stories of factory owners, social reformers, a female doctor and the first downtown hotel.more

Join us for an exciting performance of the full-scale, modern replica of The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress. Come recreate the historic experience of seeing a moving panorama in action with live piano music by Jeff Rapsis and narration by Colby Harrison. Don't miss this opportunity to meet the authors and get a signed copy of the new panorama book, The Painters' Panorama.more

Author Book TalkThursday, August 27, 6:30 p.m.Deering Room

This is the 70th anniversary of the ending of World War II. In the book, "Ice Cream, Gasmasks and God" Joyce Lovely recounts growing up in Liverpool, England amid air raids, bombs and gasmasks. As a child, she tells of life during the war from her perspective, allowing the grown ups to worry about battles, rations and lack of necessities.more

MUSEUM GALLERY TALK6:30 p.m. Thursday, August 13

Join museum director Tara Raiselis for a gallery talk in our current exhibit "Industry and Virtue Joined": Schoolgirl Needlework of Northern New England. Raiselis will focus on samplers from the coast of New Hampshire, discussing new research into the schools at which they were made and the genealogies of the girls who made them. Please be prepared to stand though the talk.